The 12 best sci-fi movies on Max that make you think

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick's claustrophobic, space-faring epic confronted audiences with a hard truth: No matter how far forward technology leaps, humans will still launch themselves into ultimately doomed quests toward somewhere else in service of whatever deities the universe provides. In spite of that ultimately bleak idea, the 1968 masterpiece is a gorgeous marvel of filmmaking, so grand in scope and design that it was originally screened on specially made curved screens to better envelop the audience in Kubrick's mad vision. We promise the "Also sprach Zarathustra" opening still lands on your television screen with the weight of an otherworldly monolith. —Alex Galbraith

Where to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey: Max

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood

The Blob (1958)

Where later sci-fi features would have to come up with ever more arcane reasons for their alien assailant's destruction, 1958's The Blob had the luxury of needing no explanation. An otherworldly goop from the far-off reaches of space has crash landed in a small town — and it's hungry. Beyond its ability to make food coloring and jelly frightening, the B-movie schlockfest is notable for being Steve McQueen's first leading role.

As the monster grows in size and color on its tyrannical tirade on Norman Rockwell's small-town America, McQueen gamely carries this slow-burn movie to its electrifying ending, with the angry red Blob meeting its match while consuming the local diner whole. The straightforward creature feature made a seismic impact on the sci-fi film genre, influencing countless future directors and inspiring a restored release through the Criterion Collection. —A.G.

Where to watch The Blob: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Irvin Yeaworth

Cast: Steven McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland

Daybreak (1993)

More than 100,000 people died in the United States from AIDS in the ‘80s, and the movie Daybreak — released in 1993 — offers an even more dystopian look at how the epidemic could have unfolded. Set in the near future, Daybreak, a sci-fi thriller, tells the story of an America under siege from an unidentified, AIDS-esque crisis. People who test positive for the disease are quarantined in camps, and killed if they try to leave. 

Cuba Gooding Jr stars as Torch, an activist who meets Blue (Moira Kelly) and begins to educate her about and radicalize her against the system. The film is based on an 1987 Off-Broadway play called Beirut, and features a cast of some of the most interesting actors working in the ‘90s. An ambitious movie for its time, Daybreak hits differently amid Covid. —Ilana Gordon

Where to watch Daybreak: Max

Director: Stephen Tolkin

Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Moira Kelly, Omar Epps, Martha Plimpton

Dune (2021)

Frank Herbert's Dune novels are dense treatises on colonialism, climate change, and the nature of power. The spice-addled mish-mash of spiritualism and Sun Tzu was considered nigh unfilmable, especially after David Lynch's unfortunate 1984 attempt. But that was before director Denis Villeneuve wowed audiences by cutting the first book in half and plopping Hollywood's hardest-working waif (Timothée Chalamet) into an unforgiving landscape riddled with monstrous, holy worms.

The resulting film throws the viewer into the confusing tumult of young Paul Atreides' life, using the foreboding nature of the source material to ramp up the story's internal tension and confusion. A score of war drums and whispers never lets the viewer find their feet on the ever-shifting sands of Arrakis, which EW's critic calls "the kind of lush, lofty filmmaking wide screens were made for." —A.G.

Where to watch Dune: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Dune fans who felt let down by the amount of screentime enjoyed by Zendaya’s character, Chani, are in for a treat during the second half of Denis Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation. Now a fully fleshed-out person with far more autonomy and substance than the character enjoyed in the original book, Zendaya’s Chani invites Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) into her community and teaches him the ways of the Fremen.

But Chani’s feelings for Paul — the would-be colonizer of her people’s home — are complicated, and Villeneuve does a great job of allowing Zendaya and Chalamet to explore this nuanced relationship, centering their love as a grounding force amidst the rest of the film’s bonkers plot. —I.G.

Where to watch Dune: Part Two: Max

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem

The Martian (2015)

Based on author Andy Weir’s best-selling novel and fronted by a tour de force performance from Matt Damon, Ridley Scott’s The Martian was nominated for Oscars in multiple categories — including Best Picture — but the real winner here is science. Scott and his team worked closely with NASA experts to nail the specifics, and the movie both educates and entertains.

The Martian begins on Mars in the year 2035 where astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) and his fellow NASA crew members — led by Cmdr. Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) — find their mission interrupted by severe weather. After Watney is knocked out by the storm and presumed dead, the crew departs without him, leaving the astronaut stranded on the Red Planet. Unwilling to give up, Watney, whose area of expertise is botany, must figure out how to connect with comms and survive for four years on Mars. —I.G.

Where to watch The Martian: Max

EW grade: A– (read the review)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Mackenzie Davis, Benedict Wong, Donald Glover, Chen Shu, Eddy Ko, Chiwetel Ejiofor

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Children were born and grew into legal adults in the years since the last Matrix movie was released. But that 18 year gap was well spent; The Matrix Resurrections — directed solely by Lana Wachowski — finds a compelling way to yank the film out of the internet's infancy and into the modern technological era. The stunts are impressive, but it's the romance between Neo and Trinity (Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss) that not only revives the franchise, but elevates it to heights that Reloaded and Revolutions could only ever dream of.

Neo — who now goes by the name Thomas Anderson — has developed several successful video games based on his distant memories of the Matrix, but his inability to distinguish between dreams and reality has him running to his therapist for help. Well worth a watch, The Matrix Resurrections reminds us why we loved getting red-pilled the first time, or, as our reviewer puts it, "All that's old is Neo again." —I.G.

Where to watch The Matrix: Resurrections: Max

EW grade: B+ (read the review)

Director: Lana Wachowski

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Neil Patrick Harris, Jonathan Groff

RoboCop (1987)

Set in a crime-ridden Detroit is RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi action/social satire classic. After police officer Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty, his body is reconfigured by the mega corporation Omni Consumer Products and transformed into that of a cyborg law enforcement agent. The former Officer Murphy — now referred to as RoboCop — has no memories of his family or previous existence, but is armed with directives to serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law.

Thus, RoboCop is dispatched into the city where he works to eliminate the local criminal population, but finds himself distracted by flashes of his former self and memories of his former life. In a world populated by crime lords and executives fueled by ruthless ambition, it’s refreshing to watch Peter Weller as RoboCop explore the vulnerability and humanity buried deep below his layers of steel and computer programming. —I.G. 

Where to watch RoboCop: Max

EW grade: A (read the review)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O'Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer

Scanners (1981)

David Cronenberg's visceral blend of body horror and sci-fi first came to American audiences thanks to this Canadian cult classic. Before he was turning the ravishing good looks of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis on their heads via a not-so-sterile experimental machine in The Fly, Cronenberg confronted audiences with the goop inside our heads with Scanners.

In this bombastic dystopia, the heightened fear of the Cold War and the rise of a revitalized right wing tears the psyches of former hippies turned yuppies inside out, a phenomenon that Cronenberg realizes in vivid shades of red. These "scanners" harbor psychic and telekinetic powers, making waves in underground rings, national security, and in the unsuspecting heads of those around them. The subsequent story is nothing short of mind-bending (and blowing, considering the famous head explosion stunt). —A.G.

Where to watch Scanners: Max

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Jennifer O'Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane, Michael Ironside

Solaris (1972)

Consider Andrei Tarkovsky's moody and meditative space story a graduate-level response to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just as grand in ambition, though less likely to be a hit if you throw it on at a party, this 1972 film dares to ask what the rules are in an endless cosmos and while intentionally avoiding spoon-feeding us easy answers.

Tarkovsky eschews the flash of his non-Soviet contemporaries, opting to use sci-fi in the manner of the era's novelists as a way to examine the as yet undiscovered contours of the human mind. The resulting film is short on special effects and long on philosophy, luxuriating in its nearly three-hour runtime to ponder human nature, unchanged even in the far-off era of long-distance space travel. —A.G.

Where to watch Solaris: Max

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast: Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk, Jüri Järvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky, Nikolai Grinko, Anatoly Solonitsyn

Stalker (1979)

Another film by Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker shares Solaris' preoccupation with the human mind and soul. The film's title refers to the main character, a guide known as the Stalker who works as an escort, ushering interested parties through an ominous and hazardous wasteland to a site called the Zone. Inside the Zone is a room that is said to be capable of granting visitors their innermost desires — though often at a heavy cost.

With a plot propelled by philosophical questions and musings, Stalker sees a writer and a professor journey into the Zone, and along the way, they meditate on the nature of human desire, selfishness, and what it means to truly know oneself. Considered one of the greatest films of all time — sci-fi or otherwise — Stalker is a movie that asks many questions but provides few conclusive answers. —I.G.

Where to watch Stalker: Max

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Alisa Freindlich, Nikolai Grinko

Time Bandits (1981)

For those who like a little anarchy with their popcorn (and who have an appreciation for uh, unconventional endings) this genre-breaking oddity conjures a grotesque and beautiful magic that could only have come from the mind of a Python. Terry Gilliam, the man responsible for The Fisher King, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, has, in Time Bandits, created a title suitable for "the whole family" (sort of).

It tells the story of young Kevin, a boy whose parents make the Dursleys look decent, who is kidnapped by ​​time-traveling dwarves and taken on a wild journey chock-full of stop-motion animation effects. Like the best of Roald Dahl, Gilliam (who co-wrote the script) presents adults as idiots, children as heroes, and adventure as a priority, all in a non-sentimental yet moving manner. —Debby Wolfinsohn

Where to watch Time Bandits: Max

Director: Terry Gilliam

Cast: John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin